Auschwitz, Poland, and the Politics of Commemoration, 1945–1979. Jonathan Huener
those who were standing nearest to the induction vents were killed at once. It can be said that about one-third died straightaway. The remainder staggered about and began to scream and struggle for air. The screaming, however, soon changed to the death rattle and in a few minutes all lay still.”30
Half an hour after the poison had been introduced, the room was ventilated and Sonderkommando prisoners began hauling the corpses to an ante-room, where they removed women’s hair. They then loaded the corpses onto an elevator that brought them to the crematorium level. Prior to incineration, they removed from the bodies jewelry, gold, and other valuables. The ovens in Crematorium II could burn three corpses in each retort in about twenty minutes, depending on the size and percentage of body fat of each corpse. Ashes and partially incinerated bones were ground, dumped into nearby pits, and later deposited in nearby ponds and the Vistula River. At times ashes were also used as fertilizer at camp farms.
The total capacity of the Auschwitz and Birkenau crematoria was intended to be approximately 4,800 bodies per day. This figure was, according to a surviving member of a Birkenau Sonderkommando, at times raised to about 8,000 by increasing the number of corpses simultaneously burned in the oven retorts.31 In the summer of 1944, after an additional railroad spur was built directly into the Birkenau camp, the cremation installations at Auschwitz-Birkenau, including additional incineration pits, could dispose of some 20,000 victims daily. That summer of 1944 also saw the largest and most systematic instance of mass genocide in history: the murder of more than 430,000 Hungarian Jews.
Himmler ordered the cessation of killing operations in the fall of 1944, but by the time Auschwitz was liberated in January 1945, it had claimed at least 1.1 million lives.32 A breakdown of these figures comparing registered and unregistered prisoners and roughly divided according to victim group reveals the following minimum estimates:
1. Between 1940 and 1945 approximately 1,305,000 deportees were sent to Auschwitz, of whom 905,000 were unregistered and 400,000 were registered. At least 1.1 million deportees died, resulting in a mortality rate for the entirety of the camp’s existence of approximately 84 percent.
2. Approximately 1,095,000 Jews were deported to Auschwitz, of whom 890,000 were unregistered and 205,000 were registered. Some 865,000 unregistered Jewish deportees and 95,000 registered Jewish deportees died there. In other words, approximately 88 percent of the Jews deported to Auschwitz did not survive, and 79 percent of them were killed shortly after their arrival, the overwhelming majority in gas chambers. Of the 202,000 registered prisoners who died at Auschwitz, slightly less than half were Jews.
3. Some 147,000 non-Jewish Poles were deported to Auschwitz, of whom an estimated 10,000 were unregistered and 137,000 were registered. About 64,000 of the registered prisoners and all of the unregistered prisoners died there, that is, approximately one-half of all Polish deportees.
4. Gypsies at Auschwitz had less than a one–in-ten chance of survival. Of the 23,000 Gypsies deported to Auschwitz (21,000 of whom were registered prisoners), 21,000, or 91 percent, perished.
5. There is, according to Piper’s estimates, no record of any survivors among the 15,000 (12,000 registered and 3,000 unregistered) Soviet prisoners of war deported to Auschwitz.
6. Some 25,000 prisoners of other nationalities (Czechs, Russians, Belorussians, Yugoslavians, French, Ukrainians, Germans, Austrians, and others) were registered as prisoners at Auschwitz, of whom approximately 13,000 survived.
These statistics are staggering and, at the same time, disturbingly anonymous. They are an essential part of Auschwitz history, and a tremendous debt is owed to those scholars who have devoted years of research to the problem of assessing the number of deportees and number of deaths at Auschwitz and other camps. One must, however, exercise caution when using numbers such as these. They are not precise, and, more importantly, one must bear in mind that an inordinate focus on statistics can easily distract from their larger historical importance and contribute to the already disturbing anonymity of the victims and perpetrators. In short, obsession with the numbers both dishonors the Auschwitz victims and mitigates the significance of the crimes against them.
Yet these statistics have a particular relevance for an analysis of Auschwitz memory at the memorial site. The number and kind of deportees and victims outlined above provide us with an empirical measure against which we can compare the presentation of Auschwitz history at the State Museum at Auschwitz, in its exhibitions, and in the public ritual undertaken there. These numbers are, in the context of this study, important in two major ways. First, they contrast sharply with the inflated figure of 4 million Auschwitz victims—a figure cited for decades by Polish and some Israeli historians and, significantly, a figure employed virtually uncontested until the early 1990s at the Auschwitz memorial site itself.33 Second, these statistics increase our awareness of who was at Auschwitz, who lived and died there and how—an awareness that is crucial to any analysis of who has been memorialized at Auschwitz and how. In other words, the numbers can be employed as one measure by which we can critically assess the manifestations of Auschwitz memory at the site.
Although historians have been concerned with the number of dead at Auschwitz, it is also worth noting that Auschwitz had a relatively high number of survivors in comparison to those sites (Chełmno/Kulmhof, Treblinka, Sobibór, and Bełżec) that functioned solely as extermination centers. This may come as a surprise to many who consider Auschwitz to have been the most deadly killing center, for Auschwitz was neither the first nor, in some respects, even the most terrifying of camps. It is true that more deportees, and among them more Jews, died at Auschwitz than anywhere else; but the number of deportees and specifically of Jewish deportees who were registered and subsequently used for slave labor at Auschwitz was also uniquely high. The simple fact that when Red Army troops entered the Auschwitz complex in January 1945 there were some seven thousand prisoners languishing there sets Auschwitz apart from other killing sites on Polish territory, where survival rates were shockingly low. Martin Gilbert has estimated that only three individuals survived Chełmno/Kulmhof, the first extermination center. His figures for the other killing centers are similarly bleak. Sixty-four Jews survived Sobibór, while as many as two hundred thousand were killed. At Treblinka up to seven hundred fifty thousand Jews were murdered and only between forty and seventy individuals survived. Finally, Gilbert estimates that at Bełżec, where five hundred fifty thousand perished, only two survived.34
If Auschwitz had, relative to other extermination centers, such a high number of survivors, it follows that many of those survivors recorded their experiences in depositions and memoirs, as well as audio and, more recently, video testimonies. There is, simply put, a wealth of information about the experiences of prisoners and the history of the Auschwitz complex. Whether Jewish, Polish, Czech, or French, survivors have left their accounts for successive generations to read, hear, and employ in the construction of individual and collective Auschwitz memories. Initially, such accounts and testimonies added to the body of knowledge on Auschwitz and served as documentary evidence, but over the years the prisoner’s account has taken on a different but no-less-meaningful function, helping to construct, maintain, and revise collective memories of Auschwitz.35 This transformation has been evident at the State Museum at Auschwitz, where many survivors, especially Polish political prisoners, were instrumental in the site’s development and in the public commemorative rituals that took place there. As a consequence, the topography and the pedagogical and political orientation of the postwar memorial site has, in many respects, reflected the memories and meaning that these survivors drew from their experiences in the camp.
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The preceding historical synopsis should reinforce two major points. First, the topography and features of postliberation Auschwitz can present only images of the landscape of the functioning camp complex. The memorial site is not and can not be Auschwitz, but is merely and inevitably a representation—preserved, constructed, reconstructed, or distorted—of Auschwitz as it existed in the years 1940–45. Second, the history of Auschwitz from 1940 to 1945 is far from monolithic. Some aspects of the complex’s history warrant greater attention than others. Some experiences were shared by all registered prisoners. Some lessons drawn from the history of the camp are more important than others. But Auschwitz lacks a convenient master narrative, a prototypic